Fight the Treatment Industrial Complex

AFSC-Arizona staff are amazing advocates for prisoners - and as such, are true blessings to our communities. Spend time on their site - lots of resources.

Retiring Arizona Prison Watch...

This site was originally started in July 2009 as an independent endeavor to monitor conditions in Arizona's criminal justice system, as well as offer some critical analysis of the prison industrial complex from a prison abolitionist/anarchist's perspective. It was begun in the aftermath of the death of Marcia Powell, a 48 year old AZ state prisoner who was left in an outdoor cage in the desert sun for over four hours while on a 10-minute suicide watch. That was at ASPC-Perryville, in Goodyear, AZ, in May 2009.

Marcia, a seriously mentally ill woman with a meth habit sentenced to the minimum mandatory 27 months in prison for prostitution was already deemed by society as disposable. She was therefore easily ignored by numerous prison officers as she pleaded for water and relief from the sun for four hours. She was ultimately found collapsed in her own feces, with second degree burns on her body, her organs failing, and her body exceeding the 108 degrees the thermometer would record. 16 officers and staff were disciplined for her death, but no one was ever prosecuted for her homicide. Her story is here.

Marcia's death and this blog compelled me to work for the next 5 1/2 years to document and challenge the prison industrial complex in AZ, most specifically as manifested in the Arizona Department of Corrections. I corresponded with over 1,000 prisoners in that time, as well as many of their loved ones, offering all what resources I could find for fighting the AZ DOC themselves - most regarding their health or matters of personal safety.

I also began to work with the survivors of prison violence, as I often heard from the loved ones of the dead, and learned their stories. During that time I memorialized the Ghosts of Jan Brewer - state prisoners under her regime who were lost to neglect, suicide or violence - across the city's sidewalks in large chalk murals. Some of that art is here.

In November 2014 I left Phoenix abruptly to care for my family. By early 2015 I was no longer keeping up this blog site, save occasional posts about a young prisoner in solitary confinement in Arpaio's jail, Jessie B.

I'm deeply grateful to the prisoners who educated, confided in, and encouraged me throughout the years I did this work. My life has been made all the more rich and meaningful by their engagement.

I've linked to some posts about advocating for state prisoner health and safety to the right, as well as other resources for families and friends. If you are in need of additional assistance fighting the prison industrial complex in Arizona - or if you care to offer some aid to the cause - please contact the Phoenix Anarchist Black Cross at PO Box 7241 / Tempe, AZ 85281. collective@phoenixabc.org

Mr. Baze’s case made its way to the United States Supreme Court, which stopped lethal injections across the country until last year, when it issued an opinion declaring Kentucky’s death penalty method — using the three-drug cocktail — to be constitutional.

The Kentucky justices said the Department of Corrections must follow the rules of the state’s administrative procedures act in the protocol for lethal injection, which include publication of the details of the procedure and public hearings on the matter.

“The Department of Corrections is required by Kentucky law to promulgate a regulation as to all portions of the lethal injection protocol except those limited issues of internal management that are purely of concern to department personnel,” wrote Justice Lisabeth Hughes Abramson for the majority of the court.

Gov. Steve Beshear issued a statement on Wednesday, saying his administration would “carefully review the decision and consider which steps we need to take.” Kentucky has 36 inmates on death row.

Similar court challenges led to new regulations in California and Maryland, and Nebraska recently published a proposed protocol, Ms. McCracken said.

But Kent Scheidegger, the legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in Sacramento, Calif., a group that supports the death penalty, said, “This has nothing to do with the validity of the protocol, avoiding suffering, or transparency in decision making.” Instead, he said, “It is purely a stalling tactic.”

The dissenting Kentucky justices stated a similar view.

In a partial dissent, Justice Bill Cunningham wrote that the court’s decision “turns on a sterile technicality” and would lead to further challenges and delay — “maybe much more delay” — in death penalty cases. Justice Will T. Scott wrote that all three men’s crimes occurred more than a decade ago, and one, 30 years ago.

“These cases cry out for closure. The families of the victims cry out for closure,” he wrote. “Respect for our law erodes when timely punishment is not given its fair place upon the scales of justice.”

Mr. Baze told The Associated Press that he understood that his execution was likely to go forward eventually, but applauded the decision. “It gets us through Christmas,” he said. “That’s a couple of months. That’s good.”
The Kentucky opinion was handed down on the same day that the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in Cincinnati, refused to stop an execution in Ohio based on a challenge to that state’s protocol for lethal injection.

The convict in that case, Kenneth Biros, faces death by lethal injection on Dec. 8, but obtained a stay of execution based on his argument that Ohio’s old protocol — which used the three-drug method — constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. But because of the shift to a single drug, the court said, “any challenge to Ohio’s three-drug execution protocol is now moot.” It left open the possibility that Mr. Biros or other prisoners might challenge the new one-drug protocol.

Prof. Douglas A. Berman, an authority on sentencing law at Ohio State University, said judges around the country were coming down on opposite sides of the same question and asked, “Where are we going to let the risk of error lie?”

Judges who are uncomfortable with the death penalty, he said, “will usually want to be shown that every possible error, every possible risk of error has been eliminated” before allowing an execution. Others, he said, “will say, ‘close enough for government work.’ ”